Pessimism and fearfulness in dairy calves

Abstract

Animals that experience situations likely to induce negative emotions show changes in judgment associated with pessimism. Few studies have focused on whether animals express stable differences in pessimism and whether these differences are related to personality traits. The first aim of this study was to explore if dairy calves are consistent over time in making judgments under ambiguous situations. Our second aim was to determine whether individual differences in judgment bias are related to conventional personality traits assessed using four standardized tests (Open field, Novel object, Human reactivity and Social motivation test). We subjected animals to two sessions of judgment bias and personality trait tests at 25 and 50 d of age. Individual differences in judgment bias were consistent over time with some animals persistently making more pessimistic choices compared to others. Two main dimensions of personality (Fearfulness and Sociability), obtained through principal component analysis, were also highly consistent over time. Pessimism was related to fearfulness, with more fearful calves making more pessimistic judgments. We conclude that dairy calves differ in the way they perceive and react to ambiguity and that this relates to individual differences in fearfulness.

Individual characteristics in early life relate to variability in weaning age, feeding behavior, and weight gain of dairy calves automatically weaned based on solid feed intake

“…Bucking, resting, and withdrawals rarely occurred during the tests and were excluded from further analysis. Behaviors recorded in both novel object and human approach tests were averaged across tests (following Neave et al, 2018a, andLecorps et al, 2018), resulting in 5 behavioral measures (number of vocalizations, latency to touch, and duration of touching, playing, and attentive) and a further 3 behavioral measures for the novel environment test (duration of active, inactive, and exploring). All measures of individual characteristics, feeding behavior, and performance were verified for normality using the PROC UNIVARIATE procedure and probability distribution plots.…”

Evaluating the temporal and situational consistency of personality traits in adult dairy cattle

“…Several studies have assessed the multidimensional character of personality in calves (e.g. [ 22 – 24 ]) and multiple personality traits have been reported. However, personality traits and their stability might change throughout ontogenesis [ 25 , 26 ] and the contextual and longer-term temporal stability of personality traits in adult lactating cows has rarely been investigated (but see [ 27 , 28 ]).…”

Validating standardised personality tests under semi‐natural conditions in wild house mice (Mus musculus domesticus)

“…This problem has become evident for example due to the different interpretations of behaviours expressed in the open field test or in emergence and novel object tests (Beckmann & Biro, 2013;Carter et al, 2013;Perals, Griffin, Bartomeus, & Sol, 2017). Recently therefore, the importance of cross-validating these standardized tests in more ecologically relevant contexts has been recognised, to avoid misinterpretation of behaviours in a context beyond that of the respective test situation (Arvidsson et al, 2017;Lecorps et al, 2018).…”

“…They found that the behaviour measured in the standardised test was not correlated with behaviour measured in the semi-natural environment, therefore not measuring the same behaviour. On the other hand, Lecorps et al (2018) found that standardised tests for sociability were related to social proximity in the home pen and tests for fearfulness and pessimism were related to distress experienced during transportation. These examples demonstrate the importance of cross-validating standardised behavioural tests to understand what they are truly measuring.…”

“…Common voles (Microtus arvalis) were for example found to exhibit seasonal differences in activity, measured as number of movements and number of barrier crosses and boldness, measured as latency to move and cross a barrier in an open field and a barrier crossing test (Herde & Eccard, 2013). Red squirrel exploration (a composite principal component score) of an open field was found to affect habitat use and survival (Boon et al, 2008) while boldness/ activity in an open field and exploration of a novel object were not related to the use of reproductive tactics as indicated by stability of personality traits across tactic switches in African striped mice (Rhabdomys pumilio, Yuen, Pillay, Heinrichs, Schoepf, & Schradin, 2015 (Carter, Feeny, Marshall, Cowlishaw, & Heinsohn, 2013) and the validity of measurements from standardised laboratory test setups to reflect natural behaviour (Arvidsson, Adriaensen, Dongen, Stobbeleere, & Matthysen, 2017Lecorps, Kappel, Weary, & Keyserlingk, 2018Yuen, Pillay, Heinrichs, Schoepf, & Schradin, 2016 (Arvidsson et al, 2017, Lecorps et al, 2018. Arvidsson et al (2017) compared activity measured in a standardised test environment in great tits (Parus major) and compared to an exploration of a semi-natural enclosure.…”